A Guide to the WordPress Codex, The Online Manual for WordPress Users

WordPress is so easy, for the most part, you can use it right out of the box. Once you get familiar with the powerful features beyond the most simple post writing, creating Pages and categories, you will probably want to do more.

The WordPress Codex is the online manual for WordPress users. It takes you through everything you want to know about how to use WordPress. From installation to customization, it’s all there. It’s also a living manual, so new articles and information are being added all the time.

Let me take you through a journey of the WordPress Codex to guide you to the information you may be looking for.

WordPress Lessons
The WordPress Codex features basic tutorials that are simple enough for the very basic beginner, while still offering intermediate level tasks and techniques to help just about every WordPress user. They are called WordPress Lessons.

Blogging for Beginners:
If you are totally new to blogging, let alone WordPress, begin your educational process with Introduction to Blogging. This will help you learn the terms and concepts that make blogging different from websites. Then stop by WordPress Semantics for a really good introduction to the terminology and jargon associated with blogging and WordPress. Once you have a handle on the jargon and a basic understanding of how it works and what a blog is, then you can get into what WordPress has to offer.

WordPress for Beginners:
Those new to WordPress, you have two choices. You can jump in and install WordPress and take it for a spin with little or no help outside of the simple and famous 5 minute installation. It is that simple. Or, you can read about how it works and then install it, learning as you go. Either way, spend some time with First Steps With WordPress and New To WordPress – Where to Start. These two documents will guide you through everything you need to know to get your WordPress blog up and going, helping you understand how all the different parts and pieces work, and how you can get them to work for you.

Exploring WordPress Features:
WordPress has some very powerful features that make blogging a dream, and makes WordPress a borderline CMS program. In fact, many use it as such. Pages are not like posts. They are non-chronological web pages that work outside of the WordPress Loop and do not “age”. Use them to create contact, about, events, schedule, and other non-post pages that provide pseudo static information.

WordPress Discussions and Comments:
A highlight of WordPress blogs is the ability to handle comments for site interactivity. Blog comments are managed from the Moderation Subpanel of the Manage panel in your WordPress Administration Panels. For the most part, comments on your WordPress blog are easy to handle, and if they make you nervous or you don’t want them, you can turn them off. You can quickly check to see if you have any comments, respond if you need to, delete them if inappropriate, and get back to writing post content to invite more comments. WordPress, right out of the box, is usually really good at eliminating many of the nagging comment spam that can come knocking. But there are other methods of dealing with comment spam if it gets out of control, putting the focus back on the content.

Choosing and Tweaking Your WordPress Theme:The next thing people always want to do is choose a WordPress Theme or tweak one that they like but want to change to make it more personalized. To choose your WordPress Theme, read Using WordPress Themes and visit the official WordPress Themes list and view the various Themes in the official WordPress Theme Viewer. First Steps With WordPress will help you understand what the various WordPress Theme elements are so you know what to look for in a Theme that matches your blog’s content and purpose.

Customizing WordPress:
The power of using the full version of WordPress, you can customize and tweak WordPress into just about anything you want and need in a website or blog. There are plenty of WordPress Lessons to help you do this. Want a photoblog or photo gallery?

Customizing Your WordPress Theme:
WordPress uses a modular template system to create the look of your blog called a WordPress Theme. To customize your WordPress Theme, or even design one from scratch, you need to understand how the WordPress template system works. Stepping Into Templates provides a basic introduction to templates, and you can find specific examples of the various custom templates used in WordPress and how to customize them yourself.

Inside of WordPress template files are WordPress Template Tags and you can get a basic understanding of how they work from reading Stepping Into Template Tags. As people make changes on their template files and style sheet, they often complain about not being able to see the changes, so there is a WordPress Lesson on “I Make Changes and Nothing Happens” to help you understand how Internet browsers store historical copies of websites you visit and how to clear out those copies so you can see the changes.

27 Comments

I am a beginner aged 56, which may explain the fact that I am slow at this!
could you tell me how to create an html link from one of my pages to an external website. The way I would normally do it doesn’t seem to work.
plus –
do I have to have a plug in to delete an image I have decided not to use and want to replace with another?
thanks,
Frances Stadlen

The basic instruction is to click the LINK button above your post edit “box” and paste in the link from the web page (copied from the address bar in your browser) in the pop up window. It will appear in your post where you’ve left the cursor.

To delete an image in WordPress.com, simply click on the image in the Image Preview section of your WRITE POST panel and choose DELETE. To replace it with another with the same name, simply upload the new image after you have deleted it.

Hi,
I have found my full version Word Press anything but simple. My host (recommended by WordPress) installed it for me (I tried by couldn’t do it by myself), since then, aside from simple posts, I haven’t been able to do much. For example, I cannot post photos (though I can do so easily on my simple WP blog). When I post help notices on the WP forum, people write back with instructions that always lead me to dead-ends. For example, I have been told to go to my WP-content folder (by the way, can I only reach that folder through my FTP, or can I also reach it through my wp-admin page?). I am told there is an “upload” file there. But I have been unable to find it. When I call my hosting service, they tell me to reload WP (thus wiping out my files). Do you have a suggestion for basic uploading? People have told me I can do everything through my WP-admin page, but I haven’t been able to. In most other areas of my life, I am not retarded.

To post photographs (or any graphic images) in your posts in WordPress 2.x, in the Write Post Panel (where you write your posts), in the section that features image uploads, click the UPLOAD tab. Then click BROWSE and a familiar window will open that looks like FILE > OPEN. Find the image file on your hard drive and select it. Make sure it is small, preferably under 50K. It will then appear in your Image Browser section. It is now uploaded to your site. The rest doesn’t matter.

To use the image, if you are using the Rich Text Editor, simply click and drag the image into the post editing window where you want it. This will put a thumbnail of the image into your post. When the user clicks on it, it will show the large version of the image. If you want the large, normal size to show in your post, then click the image in the Image section and select “Using Thumbnail” and it will change to “Using Original”. Then click and drag the image into your post content area.

If you are not using the Rich Text Editor, then you can do the same technique for thumbnail or original, then right click on the image in the viewer and choose COPY IMAGE LOCATION and then click the IMG button in the edit window section (quicktag buttons) and paste in the image location when it asks for the image location. Done. Easy.

You can then either manually type in align=”right” or align=”left” or class=”left” or class=”right” or whatever you use to float an image to the right or left for the text to wrap around the image. You are done.

No FTP, no screwing around.

Now, there are complications and problems with this.

If you have a bunch of images to upload, then you should use an FTP program as you were told.

Hi.. cool blog.. I was wondering if you would consider allowing me to add your blog feed to my news section on my site. I realise that not all of your posts are strictly webmaster related but ive written a script to only show posts containing certain keywords so theres no need to worry. Anyway, like i said.. cool blog.. some interesting stuff.. thanks

I don’t understand your question. A blog (WordPress) is a website. Do you want a static front page? Do you want different content on different Pages or posts? All that information is in the WordPress Codex, as outlined above.

I have been searching for some help with my WordPress weblog. I think I messed something up and need to change the directory back…if you have a moment, may I email you to see if you have an answer? Thanks for your great pages here, and I hope you can help me with my unique problem. Thanks.

You will be best served by asking on the WordPress Support Forums as they have the time and experience to help you directly. Good luck and be sure and search first and take advantage of the great articles in the WordPress Codex as the answer might lie there.

Thanks for posting this. I am a wordpress beginner, but as long as I have spent trying to get the hang of wordpress, I shouldn’t be.

What I don’t get is why so many people say that designing a blog is easier than designing a standard website. I don’t think this is the case at all.

I am pretty comfortable with designing website, both coding the html and using wyswig editors also, and the learning curve to learn this was not near as steep to me as trying to learn how to desing a blog.

Blog desing you need to know how to use archives, categories, pages and stuff. You need to know about plug ins and widgets and learn each one you want to use, in addition to learning WordPress by itself.

This doesn’t even take into account that you also still need to know HTML if you want your Blog to look or display certain things that WordPress just won’t let you do with it’s own editor.

So designing a blog is easier than designing a website??? I don’t know who started that myth, but I think not! 😀

Actually, designing a blog is much easier as you really need very little HTML experience if you stick with Themes, editing small features, and working with Widgets. Yes, there is a learning curve for archives, categories, Pages, and so on, but these are not much different from static HTML concerns with folders, What’s New Pages, site maps, and other design elements.

Hi, I have my photos in gallery 3 attached to my wordPress text. My problem is that I have an Album inside another Album, like a sub-album. I would like to move it as one of my main Albums. I can not find any instructions on how to do that. I don’t want to ‘start a new album’ I just want to move this album in toto. HELP!

An “album” is called a gallery, or post gallery, in WordPress. Is that what you are talking about? See Gallery Shortcodes on the WordPress Codex for details on managing those. They are not “stored” in anything physical, so you can easily add an image by uploading it again, or using the Media Library to find the old one and use that.

at 81 I must be out of my head to try to learn WordPress, but I have a burning desire to create a website around my 14 books and stories, and my son threw down the guantlet when he suggested I ‘use WordPress’.
Little did I know what I was getting into.
Thank God I found your website, Lorelle.
The gods have been kind to me for a change.

Thank you and good luck with your efforts. Remember to focus on the content, not WordPress, for the first few months. Just use the default Theme, change the header art, and put all your energy on content not paint. WordPress is simple and easy to use, so use it to do what it does best, help you have your say.

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